• A cheap alternative to discord?

    From ffuentes@ffuentes@texto-plano.xyz to tilde.javascript on Wed Jun 1 22:28:15 2022
    I very well know the advantages of known and proven software like Jabber
    or IRC but they are not very popular. IRC is too weird for users and for Jabber you need an account (Prosody even suggests to take open
    registration down for security). On the other hand, and especially for
    less techy users (maybe out of reach for tildes but maybe in for open software) Discord or Telegram are attractive for being so visually
    driven and easy to use, even across platforms.

    On the other hand, back in the day of the first web, people also used
    the WWW to chat on chat-rooms and today we have websockets that can work across platforms. I was thinking that perhaps for some less nerdy people
    a web chat that works on mobile phones as well could be a good option to
    chat on a non tracked environment or at least for us and our less techy friends. I just rewatched this 2 years old tutorial https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jD7FnbI76Hg and I'd love to make it work
    for people who are in the fediverse. I think the fediverse is an
    interesting niche of people who are not necessarily tech-savvy but might
    be willing to leave centralized platforms.

    What do you think? I think the code is good but it needs some tweaks to
    allow for administrating users but it seems like it can be added easily.

    Don't get me wrong, I like XMPP and IRC but for some people it's too far
    away.
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  • From xwindows@xwindows@tilde.club to tilde.javascript on Thu Jun 2 12:28:27 2022
    I don't have much experience with WWW-based IM frontends,
    so I will leave that for others; and I will explore the tangents
    about alternatives for one-on-one chats instead. A bit off-topic,
    but I'll write anyway, since it's quite some time now that
    I have heard anyone mention these two...

    On Wed, 1 Jun 2022, ffuentes wrote:

    Jabber you need an account

    Not necessarily if the ones you care about also have Google/Gmail account, since the old Google Talk XMPP <xmpps://talk.google.com:5223/> still exists (with catches, like no group chat there, and XMPP clients could
    only send file to XMPP clients-- proprietary client and XMPP client
    cannot send file to each other).

    Granted, doing that would not solve the issues of decentralization
    or Google-snoopery; but for some people, that would be a jump start
    for using interoperable chat protocol, without having too much of
    initial investment and barrier of lost contacts.

    (And yes, Google Talk XMPP was my first experience in using Jabber protocol)

    On the other hand, and especially for
    less techy users (maybe out of reach for tildes but maybe in for open software) Discord or Telegram are attractive for being so visually
    driven and easy to use, even across platforms.

    In this topic, you forgot Delta Chat <https://delta.chat/>, which is basically an SMS thread-style view for an email inbox; with all of the email goodies
    out of the box (interoperability, federation+decentralization,
    per-post attachment, support for long posts, and data portability);
    and of course, it's libre software.

    Since the thread is tracked by using regular email headers,
    the other party don't even have to use Delta Chat to reply;
    regular email client also works-- just write reply in the same way
    as writing a reply to a SMS conversation (quoteless, no letter formalities)
    for optimal result.

    (Though depending on the kind of inbox view the other party is using,
    the inbox can look a bit cluttered; but this doesn't affect threaded view,
    and making all Delta Chat messages go in in a dedicated folder
    would help as well)

    Note that I have not used Delta Chat myself (I'm not much of an IM person, especially *not* IM on PDA-style device) so I may not be privy of
    quirks it might present in many kinds of usage, or how well it deals
    with multiple-recipients or mailing list-based threads;
    but here is what I gathered technically at least.

    Regards,
    ~xwindows


    P.S. And since it's using full MIME message header, the performance should be around the league of Matrix chat protocol, provided that both parties
    are on the same server and IMAP push is being available (can be slower
    if parties are on different email servers due to various delivery batching/scheduling policy that are used in the wild).

    But the obvious upside is you are free to use any kind of regular
    email servers/provider (including the provider/account you're already using,
    or have been already paying for), which there are plenty of choices
    since email has been around since forever.
    --
    xwindows' gallery of freely-licensed artworks
    https://tilde.club/~xwindows/ http://tilde.club/~xwindows/ gopher://tilde.club/1/~xwindows/
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